Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-69908-2 - A Global History of History
Daniel Woolf
Frontmatter
More information
A Global History of History
A global history of historical writing, thought and the development of
the historical discipline from the ancient world to the present. This is a
definitive guide to human efforts to recover, understand and represent
the past, bringing together different historical traditions and their social,
economic, political and cultural contexts. Daniel Woolf offers clear
definitions of different genres and forms of history and addresses key
themes such as the interactions between West and East, the conflict
of oral, pictographic and written accounts of the past and the place of
history in society and in politics. Numerous textual extracts and illustrations in every chapter capture the historical cultures of past civilizations
and demonstrate the different forms that historical consciousness has
taken around the world. This book offers unique insights into the interconnections between different historical cultures over 3,000 years and
relates the rise of history to key themes in world history. Special attention
is paid to connections between the modern dominance of Western forms
of historical consciousness and the impact of European empires on other
parts of the world.
Daniel Woolf is Professor of History at Queen’s University, Kingston,
Ontario where he is currently also Principal and Vice-Chancellor. His
previous publications include Reading History in Early Modern England
(Cambridge, 2000) and the two-volume Global Encyclopedia of Historical
Writing (1998). He is also general editor of the Oxford History of
Historical Writing (2010–).
© in this web service Cambridge University Press
www.cambridge.org
Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-69908-2 - A Global History of History
Daniel Woolf
Frontmatter
More information
A Global History
of History
Daniel Woolf
QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY
KINGSTON, ONTARIO, CANADA
© in this web service Cambridge University Press
www.cambridge.org
Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-69908-2 - A Global History of History
Daniel Woolf
Frontmatter
More information
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town,
Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521699082
© Daniel Woolf 2011
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2011
Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-0-521-87575-2 Hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-69908-2 Paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or
accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to
in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such
websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
© in this web service Cambridge University Press
www.cambridge.org
Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-69908-2 - A Global History of History
Daniel Woolf
Frontmatter
More information
For JAGW
© in this web service Cambridge University Press
www.cambridge.org
Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-69908-2 - A Global History of History
Daniel Woolf
Frontmatter
More information
CONTENTS
List of illustrations
List of text extracts
List of subject boxes
Preface and conventions
Acknowledgments
page viii
xiv
xvi
xix
xxv
Introduction
1
1 Foundations
23
2 History during the First Millennium AD
75
3 An Age of Global Violence, c. 1000 to c. 1450
119
4 History in the Early Modern Empires: Europe, China, Islam
177
5 Transatlantic Histories: Contact, conquest and cultural
exchange 1450–1800
233
6 Progress and History in the Eurasian Enlightenments
281
7 The Broken Mirror: Nationalism, romanticism and
professionalization in the nineteenth-century West
345
8 Clio’s Empire: European historiography in Asia,
the Americas and Africa
399
9 Babel’s Tower? History in the Twentieth Century
457
Epilogue
509
Further reading
Index
515
553
© in this web service Cambridge University Press
www.cambridge.org
Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-69908-2 - A Global History of History
Daniel Woolf
Frontmatter
More information
ILLUSTRATIONS
Chapter 1
1 Clio, the Muse of History. Roman marble figure, c. AD 130–40, here
depicted as a Roman lady; the missing left hand may have held a scroll.
Museum, Cyrene, Libya. Copyright Gilles Mermet/Art Resource, NY. page 24
2 The Palermo stone, one of five fragments of a stele known as the
Royal Annals of the Old Kingdom, other parts of which are kept
in Cairo and London. All are part of a rectangular stele of black
amphibole diorite with names of pre-dynastic rulers, levels of Nile
floods and royal protocols. Engraved in the twenty-fifth century
BC. Museo Archeologico, Palermo, Italy. Photo credit: Erich
Lessing/Art Resource, NY.
25
3 Cuneiform tablet with part of the Babylonian Chronicle
(605–594 BC), obverse of tablet. Neo-Babylonian, c. 550–400 BC.
British Museum, London. Copyright British Museum/Art Resource, NY. 29
4 The Cyrus cylinder, 530s BC. An account by Cyrus of Persia of
his conquest of Babylon and the capture of Nabonidus, the last
Babylonian king. British Museum, London. Photo credit: Erich
Lessing/Art Resource, NY.
30
5 Double-headed herm of the Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides
from the Farnese Collection. Hellenistic sculpture. Museo Archeologico
Nazionale, Naples, Italy. Photo credit: Alinari/Art Resource, NY.
35
6 Chinese oracle bone. Shang dynasty (1650–1066 BC). Musée des
Arts Asiatiques-Guimet, Paris. Photo: Thierry Ollivier. Photo credit:
Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY.
52
7 The Qin book-burning under the Emperor Shi Huangdi, late third
century BC, depicted in a seventeenth-century history of the lives of
Chinese emperors. Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Photo credit:
Snark/Art Resource, NY.
60
8 Rajput school (sixteenth to nineteenth centuries). Hanuman, King of
the Monkeys, goes to Ceylon. Episode from the Bhagavata Puran
. a,
Hindu miniature, seventeenth century, from the court of Malwa. National
Museum, New Delhi, India. Photo credit: Borromeo/Art Resource, NY.
68
© in this web service Cambridge University Press
www.cambridge.org
Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-69908-2 - A Global History of History
Daniel Woolf
Frontmatter
More information
List of illustrations
9 Section of the Sri Bhagavata Puran
. a, c. 1880–1900. Scroll of a
Sanskrit text written in Devanagari script, with illustrations of Hindu
stories; border of floral designs on a gold background. British Library,
London. Photo credit: HIP/Art Resource, NY.
Chapter 2
10 Opening leaf of Book I of a ninth-century manuscript of Bede’s
Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum. British Library, London,
shelfmark Cotton Tib. C II, fo. 5v. Photo credit: HIP/Art Resource, NY.
11 Excerpt from the text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This manuscript
was probably copied at Abingdon Abbey c. 1046; the last paragraph
describes King Alfred the Great’s defeat of the Danes at Edington in
AD 878. British Library, London, shelfmark Cotton Tib. B I, fo. 132.
Photo credit: HIP/Art Resource, NY.
ix
69
86
111
Chapter 3
12 At the Court of the Khan. Double-page miniature (left half). Illuminated
manuscript page from Rashid al-din’s Jami ‘al-tawarikh (‘Compendium
of Chronicles’), a universal history. Manuscript dates c. 1330 AD.
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Germany. Photo credit: Bildarchiv
Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY.
127
13 Genghis Khan dividing his empire among his sons. From a Mughalage manuscript of Rashid al-din’s Jami ‘al-tawarikh (‘Compendium of
Chronicles’), c. 1596. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image
copyright: The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY.
128
14 Various episodes from French history in a fourteenth-century
manuscript of the Chroniques de Saint-Denis/Grandes Chroniques de
France. Scenes include the coronation of Pharamond, the Battle of
the Franks vs the Romans and the baptism of Clovis. Musée Condé,
Chantilly, France. Photo credit: Bridgeman-Giraudon/Art Resource, NY. 141
15 Battle of Courtrai, Flanders, 1302, from a late fourteenth-century
manuscript of the Chroniques de Saint-Denis. British Library, London,
shelfmark Royal 20 C VII, fo. 34. Photo credit: HIP/Art Resource, NY. 142
16 Sigurd kills Regin, detail from the Saga of Sigurd Favnesbane,
twelfth century. Wood carving from the Hylestad stave church, Setesdal,
Norway. Universitetets Oldsaksamling, Oslo, Norway. Photo credit:
Werner Forman/Art Resource, NY.
147
17 Illustration from the collection of Icelandic sagas, the Flateyjarbók,
from the Saga of Olaf Tryggvason, here depicted killing a wild boar
and a sea-ogress. Late fourteenth-century manuscript. Stofhun Arna
© in this web service Cambridge University Press
www.cambridge.org
Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-69908-2 - A Global History of History
Daniel Woolf
Frontmatter
More information
x
List of illustrations
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
Magnussonar a Islandi, Reykjavik, Iceland. Photo credit: Werner
Forman/Art Resource, NY.
Genealogical table of the Saxon kings and emperors (top row: Dukes
Brun, Ludolf and Otto of Saxony), from Ekkehard von Aura, Chronicon
Universale. Miniature on parchment, c. 1100–50, Corvey, Germany.
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Germany. Photo credit: Bildarchiv
Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY.
Family tree of the royal Nemanjic dynasty, Serbia. Byzantine fresco,
1346–50. Decani Monastery, Decani, Kosovo. Photo credit: Erich
Lessing/Art Resource, NY.
Caesar landing in Britain, from an illuminated Flemish manuscript
of Jean Mansel, La fleur des histoires, c. 1454–60. Bibliothèque
de l’Arsenal, Paris, MS 5088, fo. 112. Photo credit: Erich Lessing/Art
Resource, NY.
Civil service examinations under the Song dynasty. Manuscript page
from a seventeenth-century history of the lives of Chinese emperors.
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Photo credit: Snark/Art Resource, NY.
148
150
151
152
157
Chapter 4
Die Alexanderschlacht, or ‘The Battle of Alexander at Issus’, 333 BC.
Painting by Albrecht Altdorfer, 1529. Alte Pinakothek, Munich. Photo
credit: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.
182
Sallust, depicted in fresco, c. 1500–3, by Luca Signorelli (1441–1523).
Duomo, Orvieto, Italy. Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.
186
Francesco Guicciardini. Nineteenth-century statue of the Florentine
historian sculpted by Luigi Cartei. Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Photo credit:
Vanni/Art Resource, NY.
189
The humanist Antoine Macault reads from his translation of Diodorus
Siculus in the presence of Francis I, king of France. From Les trois
premiers livres de Diodore de Sicile, trans. A. Macault, 1534, parchment.
Musée Condé, Chantilly, France. Photo credit: Réunion des Musées
Nationaux/Art Resource, NY.
198
The Persian Shah Tahmahsb receives the Mughal Emperor Humayyun.
Safavid mural, mid-seventeenth century. Chihil Sutun (Pavilion of
Forty Columns), Isfahan, Iran. Photo credit: SEF/Art Resource, NY.
212
Babur leaving Kabul to attack Kandahar. Miniature from an early
seventeenth-century manuscript of the Akbarnama. British Library,
London. Photo credit: HIP/Art Resource, NY.
219
Surrender of Belgrade, 1521. From Lok.man, Hunername, on the
military campaigns of Suleyman the Magnificent. Ottoman, 1588.
© in this web service Cambridge University Press
www.cambridge.org
Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-69908-2 - A Global History of History
Daniel Woolf
Frontmatter
More information
List of illustrations
Topkapi Palace, Istanbul. Photo credit: Bridgeman-Giraudon/Art
Resource, NY.
xi
224
Chapter 5
29 The arrival of Cortés in Mexico depicted in Codex Azcatitlan.
Manuscript Mexicains n 59–64. Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
Photo credit: Snark/Art Resource, NY.
241
30 Lunar goddesses, Mayan manuscript, twelfth century. From the
Dresden Codex, fo. 20. Saechsische Landesbibliothek, Dresden,
Germany. Photo credit: Art Resource, NY.
249
31 Wooden calendrical slit drum (teponaztli), Mixtec, Mexico. The scene
depicts a battle between two cities and is carved with figures
and calendrical inscriptions in the same style as used in Mixtec
screenfold codices. British Museum, London. Copyright British
Museum/Art Resource, NY.
250
32 Codex Zouche-Nuttall. Facsimile of codex, a forty-seven-leaf screenfold
paper manuscript, painted, after 1320; Mixtec late post-classic period,
1200–1521. This contains two narratives: one side relates the history
of important centres in the Mixtec region; the other, starting at the
opposite end, records the genealogy, marriages and political and
military feats of the Mixtec ruler Eight Deer Jaguar-Claw. British
Museum, London. Copyright British Museum/Art Resource, NY.
251
33 Massacre of the Aztecs. Miniature from Fray Diego Durán, History
of the Indies of New Spain, fo. 211, 1579. Biblioteca Nacional,
Madrid. Photo credit: Bridgeman-Giraudon/Art Resource, NY.
252
34 Inca quipu, a series of knotted strings on a carved wooden stick.
Peru or Bolivia, 1400–1532. Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche
Museen zu Berlin, Germany. Photo credit: Bildarchiv Preussischer
Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY.
259
35 The Quipucamayoc (‘Keeper of the Quipu’), from Felipe Guaman Poma
de Ayala, El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno, c. 1600–15. Royal
Library, Copenhagen, Denmark. Photo credit: Nick Saunders/Barbara
Heller Photo Library, London/Art Resource, NY.
269
Chapter 6
36 J. B. Belley, deputy of Santo Domingo, next to a bust of Guillaume T. F.
Raynal, philosopher and historian who criticized French policies in the
colonies. Painting on canvas by Anne Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson,
1797. Chateaux de Versailles et de Trianon, Versailles, France. Photo
credit: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.
286
© in this web service Cambridge University Press
www.cambridge.org
Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-69908-2 - A Global History of History
Daniel Woolf
Frontmatter
More information
xii
List of illustrations
37 The Muse Clio. Studio of François Boucher (1703–70), 1750s. Oil on
canvas. Wallace Collection, London. Photo credit: by kind permission
of the Trustees of the Wallace Collection, London/Art Resource, NY.
38 David Hume (1711–76), Scottish philosopher and historian; engraved
portrait from a book. Photo Credit: Art Resource, NY.
39 Antiquaries at Pola, Italy, by Thomas Patch (1725–82), illustrating
eighteenth-century amateur archaeological activity. Dunham Massey,
Cheshire, Great Britain. Photo credit: National Trust/Art Resource, NY.
40 Confucius thanking the heavens for his being given the time to write
his six books. An illustration of eighteenth-century Sinophilia. Isidore
S. H. Helman (1743–1809), engraving from Abrégé historique des
principaux traits de la vie de Confucius, célèbre philosophe chinois,
d’après des dessins originaux de la Chine envoyés à Paris par M.
Amiot, missionnaire à Pékin. Paris, 1788. Private Collection. Photo
credit: Snark/Art Resource, NY.
41 A First Reading of ‘The Orphan of China’ by Voltaire, 1755. Painting
on canvas by Anicet Charles Gabriel Lemonnier (1743–1824). Musée
des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, France. Photo Credit: Erich Lessing/Art
Resource, NY.
42 Scenes from the life of a yangban, by one of Korea’s best-known
painters, Kim Hong-do (c. 1745 to c. 1806). Eight-panel folding screen.
Korean, Yi Dynasty (1392–1910). Musée des Arts Asiatiques-Guimet,
Paris. Photo: Thierry Ollivier. Photo credit: Réunion des Musées
Nationaux/Art Resource, NY.
287
288
304
315
316
319
Chapter 7
43 The Princes in the Tower. An episode from England’s late medieval
past as subsequently described by Shakespeare and others, whereby
the sons of King Edward IV were murdered in the Tower by their uncle,
King Richard III, who then usurped the throne. By the German
painter Theodor Hildebrandt (1804–74). Kunstsammlung NordrheinWestfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany. Photo credit: Erich Lessing/Art
Resource, NY.
348
44 The Death of the Venerable Bede in Jarrow Priory, by William Bell
Scott (1811–90). From a set of murals illustrating Anglo-Scottish border
history, designed in 1856, now found in the Central Hall at Wallington
Hall. Photo: Derrick E. Witty. Wallington, Northumberland, Great
Britain. Photo credit: National Trust Photo Library/Art Resource, NY.
349
45 Heinrich Gothard von Treitschke, German historian and political
theorist. Anonymous photograph, c. 1865. Photo credit:
Adoc-photos/Art Resource, NY.
354
© in this web service Cambridge University Press
www.cambridge.org
Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-69908-2 - A Global History of History
Daniel Woolf
Frontmatter
More information
List of illustrations
46 Jules Michelet, by Thomas Couture (1815–79). Musée Renan Scheffer,
Paris. Photo Credit: Bridgeman-Giraudon/Art Resource, NY.
47 Portrait of Washington Irving and his Literary Friends at Sunnyside,
Irving’s Tarrytown, New York home, by Christian Schussele (1824–79),
1864. The painting is a ‘Who’s Who’ of the antebellum American
literary elite which included popular historians: W. H. Prescott is
seated centrally in profile, George Bancroft at far right. Irving is seated
centrally, facing the viewer, to the right of Prescott; James Fenimore
Cooper, the historical novelist, sits to the left of Bancroft. National
Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Photo credit:
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution/Art Resource, NY.
48 Teaching. A nineteenth-century fresco in the Sorbonne featuring some
of France’s greatest historians, including Renan, Quinet and Guizot.
Michelet is standing, holding papers. Sorbonne, Paris, France. Photo
credit: Snark/Art Resource, NY.
49 ‘How the Danes came up the Channel a thousand years ago’, 1925. An
example of pictorial illustrations in history textbooks from a frequently
reprinted early twentieth-century series, Highroads of History. This
scene comes from Book II: ‘Stories from British History’, published by
Thomas Nelson and Sons (London, Edinburgh, New York, 1925). The
Print Collector, Great Britain. Photo credit: HIP/Art Resource, NY.
50 Berlin savants. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (top centre) depicted
with several stars of the early nineteenth-century Berlin intellectual
firmament, including Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt.
Lithograph, c. 1810, by Julius Schoppe. Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche
Museen, Berlin. Photo: Joerg P. Anders. Photo credit: Bildarchiv
Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY.
51 Johann Gustav Droysen. Anonymous photograph, c. 1870. A product
of the University of Berlin, where Ranke presided, Droysen authored
works of both history and the philosophy of history, including his
influential Outline of the Principles of History. Photo credit:
Adoc-photos/Art Resource, NY.
386
Chapter 8
52 Solomon grasping the hand of the Queen of Sheba. Illuminated page
from The History of the Queen of Sheba. Ethiopia, late nineteenth
century, text in Ge‘ez and Amharic. Manuscript division, Staatliche
Museen zu Berlin, Germany. Photo credit: Bildarchiv Preussischer
Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY.
441
© in this web service Cambridge University Press
xiii
355
363
365
366
383
www.cambridge.org
Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-69908-2 - A Global History of History
Daniel Woolf
Frontmatter
More information
TEXT EXTRACTS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
Chapter 1
Assyrian historical propaganda: the Synchronistic History
Thucydides on his own historical methods
Early Chinese historical writing: the Zuozhuan
Annalistic writing in the Vam
. sas: the reign of Vijayabahu I
(r. 1056–1111)
page 28
37
58
Chapter 2
Bede’s Ecclesiastical History
Isidore of Seville on history
Islamic historical writing in the tenth century: al-T.abar i
History in early Japan: Nihon Shoki on the Emperor Temmu
Chapter 3
Mongol historical writing: Altan Tobč i
The Crusades from a Muslim perspective: the Chronicle of
Ibn al-Qalanisi
Norse historical writing: Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla
History in medieval Russia: the Chronicle of Novgorod
Fourteenth-century Japanese historical epic: Taiheiki
Historical writing in thirteenth-century Korea: Ilyŏn’s Samguk Yusa
Chapter 4
15 The spread of humanist history in northern Europe: Fenton’s
translation of Guicciardini
16 Bossuet on the uses of universal history
17 Persian historical writing under the Safavids: Iskandar Beg Munshi
18 A Mughal princess writes history: Gul-Badan Begam’s The History of
Humayun
19 Mustafa Na’îmâ on how and why to write history
Chapter 5
20 Alva Ixtlilxóchitl’s account of the coming of the Spanish
© in this web service Cambridge University Press
71
88
90
97
107
124
126
138
146
162
167
190
194
213
218
226
258
www.cambridge.org
Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-69908-2 - A Global History of History
Daniel Woolf
Frontmatter
More information
List of text extracts
21 A Spanish missionary on Mesoamerican indigenous histories:
Motolinía
22 Guaman Poma de Ayala on the origins of the Incas
23 Mercy Otis Warren on history
262
266
275
Chapter 6
24 Russian historical writing westernizes: Karamzin on the Kiev and
Mongol periods
25 Voltaire on the necessity of doubt
26 Motoori Norinaga’s critique of Nihon Shoki
27 Herder on the succession of cultures
291
305
330
338
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
Chapter 7
Geijer on Swedish medieval history
Ranke on Guicciardini’s History of Italy
History as a sentimental observer: Carlyle on the struggles of
the Girondins and Montagnards
Positivism and history: Buckle on historiography
Nietzsche on the characteristics of the historian
Chapter 8
Europe and the awakening of Indian national self-consciousness:
K. M. Panikkar
Barbarism and civilization: Domingo Faustino Sarmiento
The boundaries of history and fiction: José Milla (1822–82)
Burmese history: the Glass Palace Chronicle
A Javanese babad: Babad ing Sangkala
Sĕjarah Mĕlayu: the ‘Malay Annals’
A Sumatran Hikayat
Early historical writing in Ethiopia
Napoleon in Egypt: al-Jabarti’s Chronicle
Chapter 9
The relations of geography and history: Henri Berr
Stalin on historical science
The education of a Marxist historian: Halvdan Koht
An early postcolonial critic of history: Eric Williams on British
historians and imperialism
The North American indigenous past: Anna Lee Walters
© in this web service Cambridge University Press
xv
361
369
379
380
393
405
408
409
414
418
420
421
442
447
465
478
484
498
505
www.cambridge.org
Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-69908-2 - A Global History of History
Daniel Woolf
Frontmatter
More information
SUBJECT BOXES
Chapter 1
1 King lists, annals and chronicles
2 Xenophon
3 Julius Caesar
4
5
6
7
8
Chapter 2
Isidore of Seville
Ta’rikh al-rusul wa’l-muluk
Huayang guozhi
Historical encyclopedias
Rikkokushi (‘Six National Histories’)
page 27
40
46
89
96
101
103
108
Chapter 3
9 Mongol chronicles
10 Historical speculation in the medieval West
11 Urban chronicles
123
132
149
Chapter 4
Women and history in Renaissance Europe
The Donation of Constantine
The ars historica
Mustafa Âli’s Essence of History
181
183
197
228
12
13
14
15
Chapter 5
16 Las Casas’ History of the Indies
17 Guaman Poma’s El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno
18
19
20
21
Chapter 6
Historical writing in Russia
Pietro Giannone’s Civil History of the Kingdom of Naples
Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu
Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke
© in this web service Cambridge University Press
245
268
292
294
298
308
www.cambridge.org
Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-69908-2 - A Global History of History
Daniel Woolf
Frontmatter
More information
List of subject boxes
22 William Jones, language and Indian historicity
23 Justus Möser
314
333
Chapter 7
24 Nationalism and the oral past
25 Ranke’s disciples
26 Henri de Saint-Simon
357
372
381
27
28
29
30
Chapter 8
Settler historiographies
Truth and fiction in the babads
The Kume affair
The Hamitic hypothesis
411
417
431
444
31
32
33
34
35
Chapter 9
Relativism
The Fischer controversy and Historikerstreit
Hayden White and Metahistory
The new oral history
Indigenous historicity
460
474
494
503
504
© in this web service Cambridge University Press
xvii
www.cambridge.org
Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-69908-2 - A Global History of History
Daniel Woolf
Frontmatter
More information
PREFACE AND CONVENTIONS
The purpose of this book, in brief, is to provide a history of history, suitable for
undergraduates, faculty members seeking a relatively concise introduction to the
subject and the interested general reader. Many years of teaching courses on historiography, and the prescription of several different textbooks for the students in
those courses, convinced me that a further work was needed, but most of all I have
been struck for many years by the relative dearth of studies of ‘historiography’
(a term for discussion of which see below, in the introduction) which covered the
entire span of human efforts to recover, understand and represent the past, from
earliest known times to the present, and that did so in a geographically inclusive
manner. There are several books covering very long time spans, and one or two
with a global reach, but none in English, of which I am aware, that do both. A
conviction that students ought to be exposed to the ‘historical cultures’ of other
civilizations than their own has thus informed my choice of subject; a strong sense
that there is a story to be told about the development of historical thought, historical writing and the modern historical discipline, and that it relates directly to some
of the larger movements of world history (in particular the global engagement of
different peoples and cultures over several millennia), provides the ‘plot’, if a work
on historiography can be said to have a plot.
The years of teaching various aspects of the subject have also convinced me that
students, especially those in compulsory courses on historiography, dislike most
textbooks because they consist of a parade of names of great historians, most of
whom the student has never heard of, and will in all likelihood never read, unless
they go on to advanced study in the field. I have therefore tried to avoid creating such a parade, though the necessity of inclusiveness and breadth means that
I may not always have succeeded. I have found that students unnecessarily fear
historiography as ‘difficult’ or ‘dull’ (though it is not always clear what they mean
by either word). Since the first time I heard the term ‘historiography’ as an undergraduate and began to write papers of various sorts (and ultimately a doctoral
thesis) on historiographic topics, I have had a fascination with how we have, as a
species, come to terms with the past. I find the great works of historiography as
intellectually exciting and riveting as many great works of literature, though it is
true that very few historians have written works that command a wide readership
today. Many other past historical works, of lesser literary merit, can nonetheless
© in this web service Cambridge University Press
www.cambridge.org
Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-69908-2 - A Global History of History
Daniel Woolf
Frontmatter
More information
xx
Preface and conventions
provide us with windows into past cultures’ ideas about their own pasts, and with
traces of now-vanished notions about scholarship and truth. A broadening of my
own horizons in the past fifteen years has not changed my attitude to the ‘classic’
histories, but it has led me to many non-Western works of historiography and thus
to a different perspective on the more familiar ‘canon’ of great historians from
Thucydides to the present. Many of these non-Western works are, happily, gradually becoming more readily available in English and other European languages.
While the chapters of this book are free-standing and can be assigned separately, the reader will derive more from the book if he or she reads them in order:
there is, again, an argument and a story, and there is a continuity of themes between chapters.
In order to make the book more accessible, and allow it to serve multiple
purposes, I have introduced a few features that are not normally found in texts on
historiography. These are connected to, but can again, stand apart from, the main
narrative. Four features in particular require explanation.
s 4HElRSTISASERIESOF@3UBJECT"OXES4HESEPROVIDEADDITIONALDETAILONPARticular episodes or important points in the history of history, and sometimes on
individual historians, approaches or ‘schools’. They can be read on their own and
are separated from the main narrative both in order to highlight them and not
to distract from the account in the chapter itself.
s 4HESECONDISAPARALLELSERIESOFOFFSET@%XTRACTSINADDITIONTOTHEQUOTATIONS
that appear in the main text. These are designed to provide illustrative examples,
principally of lesser-known histories or historians, and often of non-European
historical works (or works indicating historical consciousness even if they do
not fit the normal expectations of what a history should look like). Quotations
in the text proper routinely illustrate a point being made in the book; the offset
extracts, while generally illustrative, can be detached and analysed separately.
Instructors may, of course, find these too brief, and wish to prescribe separate,
lengthier extracts from other works, or even the complete text by a particular
historian, a Herodotus or Voltaire. In my experience, there is relatively little
time in a twelve-week or even twenty-four-week course for students to read
very many complete works, though it is certainly hoped that some will be sufficiently excited by the topic that they wish to pursue it on their own, or in further
courses.
s 4HETHIRDISANANNOTATED@&URTHER2EADINGSECTIONFOREACHCHAPTERRATHERTHAN
a single amalgamated bibliography), which can be found at the end of the book.
On occasion, where two or more sections share several titles in common, their
further reading sections have been combined; and in Chapter 8, an additional bibliographical appendix has been supplied, arranged by nation or region, reflecting
© in this web service Cambridge University Press
www.cambridge.org
Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-69908-2 - A Global History of History
Daniel Woolf
Frontmatter
More information
Preface and conventions
xxi
one important theme (the connection between history and modern nationalism)
of that chapter. In the case of books for which there are multiple editions I have
listed the edition which I have consulted, while sometimes noting for clarity
the original year in which the work was published. This is especially necessary
with some secondary works widely available in modern paperback editions but
in fact authored many years or even decades ago and thus likely to have been
superseded or at least modified by subsequent scholarship.
s 4HEFOURTHFEATUREISTHEINCLUSIONOFANUMBEROFPICTURES7ITHAFEWEXCEPtions, these avoid the ‘portrait gallery’ (to go along with the textual ‘parade’)
of famous historians. On rare occasions where images of individual historians
are included it is typically in order to reveal something about contemporary (or
later) perceptions of them. In several instances, the pictures are intended to help
illustrate a particular point or to give the reader a clearer idea of the actual appearance of an object referred to, especially where dealing with physical forms
of history other than the book (for instance, Inca quipus and Mesoamerican
pictorial histories).
Diacriticals and transliteration
In a work such as this where many languages and scripts come into play, a balance
needs to be struck between fidelity to the original and readability for the nonexpert. I have thus in several instances adopted a ‘minimal-diacritical’ approach.
For Arabic the full standard system which I have followed in other works is unnecessarily elaborate in a book such as this which is intended for the relative novice. I have followed the usage and spellings in C. F. Robinson, Islamic Historiography (Cambridge, 2003), including dots above and below letters and bars above,
but dispensing with underlined characters. With familiar proper or family names
that are frequently used in English (such as ‘Abbasid’, ‘Mamluk’ or ‘Muhammad’),
diacriticals have been dispensed with.
In Arabic, the mark ‘ denotes a letter (‘ayn) often transliterated as an inward
facing single quotation mark; ’ denotes a quite distinct character, hamza. Hamzas
and ‘ayns have generally been retained, using this form of transliteration.
Indian names and words are also heavily accented, especially those from earlier
periods, but these marks have normally been discarded in sections on modern
India and modern Indian historians, in keeping with current scholarly practice on
the subcontinent.
Roman alphabet titles of books are not adjusted but appear as they would in
normal bibliographical records.
Chinese names and words are rendered according to the pinyin system,
which has supplanted the older Wade-Giles system as the standard protocol for
© in this web service Cambridge University Press
www.cambridge.org
Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-69908-2 - A Global History of History
Daniel Woolf
Frontmatter
More information
xxii
Preface and conventions
transliteration: thus Mao Zedong not Mao Tse-tung. Certain exceptions to this rule
apply for historians with established Western names, such as Confucius, whose
Chinese name was either Kong Qiu or Kong Zi (Master Kong). The names of Chinese historians publishing in Western languages, and the titles of books originally
issued in those languages, follow the actual spelling of the author or title, whether
Wade-Giles or pinyin.
Korean words and names are more problematic, as no system has yet achieved
dominance, including the long-standing McCune-Reischauer system, and romanization practices thus vary. I have therefore often provided alternative spellings of
a word or name.
Chinese, Korean and Japanese names appear with the family name first followed
without a comma by the given name. This is well-known and common practice for
Chinese and Korean, but in the case of Japanese, Western journalistic practice has
tended to invert the name order according to North American usage, a practice
that we have not followed: thus a reference to Ienaga Saburo denotes a historian
whose surname is Ienaga. Occasional exceptions, mainly historians whose names
appear Western-style on their English-language publications, are indexed with
commas to avoid confusion; a few Japanese historians (Motoori Norinaga and
Hayashi Razan for instance) are by convention referred to by their given names,
e.g. Norinaga. As with Arabic, where a word has become commonplace in English
usage (for instance ‘shogun’), the diacriticals are omitted.
Adjectives or adverbs constructed out of foreign terms, usually for the purpose
of grouping a category of person or text, dispense with diacriticals. Thus we write
on India about puran
. a (the noun), but about puranic texts.
Where the system of transliteration in a quoted or extracted text differs from my
own usage (as for instance in the case of Chinese, where most translations until
recently followed the Wade-Giles method, while I have used the now-standard
pinyin system), I have maintained the spelling as it is in the source of the extract
or quotation, and of course in actual titles of modern books and articles. Thus
the historian referred to by me as ‘Sima Qian’ is the same individual referred to
by earlier authors as ‘Ssu-ma Ch’ien’, which is simply the same name in WadeGiles transliteration; Ban Gu is Pan Ku, and so on; the Qing dynasty is the same
as the Ch’ing; and Mao Zedong is Mao Tse-tung. Occasionally where I have felt
more explicit signposting is justified I have inserted the pinyin spelling in square
brackets.
Citations and quotations
In an effort to maximize readability, footnotes have been kept to a minimum and
are used to document very specific points and quotations or, on occasion, to add
a detail of interest but not essential to the main narrative. Where a fact or point
© in this web service Cambridge University Press
www.cambridge.org
Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-69908-2 - A Global History of History
Daniel Woolf
Frontmatter
More information
Preface and conventions
xxiii
is uncontroversial, well known or contained in many other books, no footnote is
provided. Bibliographic references for primary quotations and the longer extracts
that accompany the main text are given in full. Not every item cited in a footnote
is included in the ‘Further reading’ section.
Titles of historical works cited within the main text are routinely given in their
original language (transliterated if in a non-Roman script) with an English translation of that title following in quotation marks, within parentheses; such translated
titles are generally not italicized except where used subsequently in the main text
or, naturally, if a particular edition of the work is cited, as in the footnotes and
bibliography. The purpose of this somewhat cumbersome practice is to provide an
understandable translation (typically one used in the secondary works on which
I have relied) to English-speaking readers while also easing reference back to the
work in its original language for those willing and able to read it. Where the meaning of a title seems reasonably obvious, or is cited fully in a note, no parenthetical translation is provided, and in some instances I have, for the sake of brevity,
simply referred to a work by its most familiar English title. The foreign names of
journals and periodicals are not normally translated, e.g. Historische Zeitschrift.
Dates
A multitude of calendars have been used by various peoples in the course of the
past five thousand years. Full compliance with the non-Eurocentric principles of
this book would suggest that dates be recorded as the authors being described
recorded them, for instance using the Hijri year of the Muslim calendar. However,
this would be far more confusing than helpful. While a compromise might have
been to use dates in the format of Common Era (CE)/Before the Common Era (BCE),
I have opted for familiarity and simplicity and used the more conventional ‘BC’
and ‘AD’.
Vital dates (where known) for most historians (and many who were not historians but nonetheless figure in the narrative) are provided in the main text. Certain
abbreviations for dates have been used:
b. = born, in the case of historians still living as of mid-2010.
c. = circa, approximate year where no firm year is known or agreed upon.
comp. = composed during or complete by.
d. = died. Used where a firm death year is known (or approximate, in which
case noted as ‘d. c.’).
est. = established, for instance, a journal or historical society.
fl. = ‘floruit’, that is ‘flourished’: generally used in relation to authors for
whom birth and death dates are entirely unknown or highly obscure;
indicates active period.
© in this web service Cambridge University Press
www.cambridge.org
Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-69908-2 - A Global History of History
Daniel Woolf
Frontmatter
More information
xxiv
Preface and conventions
r. = ‘reigned’. When a monarch is noted, his or her regnal years, not years
of birth and death, are noted in parentheses. The same applies to nonmonarchical but significant officials, for instance popes.
In some cases alternative dates are used either because of lack of agreement in
scholarship as to a single date, or in some instances because the date itself is tied
to a particular chronological scheme which itself is ambiguous.
© in this web service Cambridge University Press
www.cambridge.org
Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-69908-2 - A Global History of History
Daniel Woolf
Frontmatter
More information
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The many historians mentioned in the next several hundred pages often acknowledged patrons, employers, monarchs and those who provided them with information or correction. It is both appropriate and a pleasure for me to do so in the case
of this book.
My various undergraduate instructors (at Queen’s University, to which I have
recently returned) and graduate mentors at Oxford encouraged my early interest
in historiography. They are too numerous to name individually, as are the dozens of colleagues in both early modern British/European history and, latterly, the
broader history of historiography, whom I have met and profited from over several decades. Colleagues at the several other institutions in which I have worked
generously provided references and suggestions. I have similarly learned a great
deal from the many contributors to the Global Encyclopedia of Historical Writing,
which I edited in the 1990s, and to its more recent successor, still in the process of
appearing, The Oxford History of Historical Writing. I would, however, like to thank
by name (though some of them have not always agreed with me on particular
points or even approach), Michael Aung-Thwin, Michael Bentley, Stefan Berger,
Peter Burke, William Connell, Antoon De Baets, Ewa Domańska, Georg Iggers,
Donald R. Kelley, Ann Kumar, the late Joseph Levine, Fritz Levy, Chris Lorenz,
Juan Maiguashca, Allan Megill, J. G. A. Pocock, Attila Pók, José Rabasa, Jörn
Rüsen, Dominic Sachsenmaier, Masayuki Sato, Axel Schneider, Romila Thapar,
Edoardo Tortarolo, Markus Völkel, Q. Edward Wang and Hayden White. Several
institutions have invited me to lecture on historiography in the past few years
and I have profited from questions and criticisms received on those occasions;
in particular, a workshop on global historiography at the University of Vienna in
April 2010, organized by Professor Deborah Klimburg-Salter, allowed me a dry run
of the book’s introduction. I must also acknowledge my debt to the work of two
historiographers a generation senior to me (and whom I have corresponded with
but regrettably never met in person), Ernst Breisach and the late John Burrow,
both authors of surveys of Western historiography. If my book differs substantively from their own, especially in its geographic scope, it is the better for having
obliged me to think carefully about the basis of that difference.
Maryanne Cline Horowitz, general editor of the New Dictionary of the History of
Ideas, invited me in 2002 to write an essay on historiography for that publication.
© in this web service Cambridge University Press
www.cambridge.org
Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-69908-2 - A Global History of History
Daniel Woolf
Frontmatter
More information
xxvi
Acknowledgments
The present book is an expansion of that essay, and I thank Michael Watson
at Cambridge University Press both for encouraging me to write it and for his
patience through many revisions. I thank Rosina di Marzo at the Press for having shepherded the book through production and Rose Bell for exemplary copyediting. I am grateful to the Board of Governors at my former institution, the
University of Alberta, for providing me with a year’s leave during which a (much
longer) first draft of the book was written, and to the University of Alberta’s
Vice-President (Research) and Provost and Vice-President (Academic) for funding
that allowed, among other things, the acquisition of the many illustrations and
the hiring of graduate research assistance. Among my own graduate students at
Alberta and (after 2009) Queen’s, principally in the area of early modern England,
who have put up with my digressions into global historiography, and often provided perceptive feedback, I thank Matthew Neufeld, Sarah Waurechen and Jane
Wong Yeang-Chui. Other graduate students have assisted in other ways (including
summarizing for me books in languages which I do not read), in particular Tanya
Henderson, Carolyn Salomons, Tony Maan and Nina Paulovicova. The experience
of teaching historiography to many students at all levels at Queen’s (during an
earlier, postdoctoral, stage of my career), Bishop’s, Dalhousie, McMaster and the
University of Alberta added immeasurably to my sense of what I liked in other
textbooks and what I did not, which was of course not always the same as what
the students liked.
Ian Hesketh, my research associate at Queen’s, took time out from his other duties to provide a ruthlessly sharp critique and meticulous editing of the first version of the manuscript, shrinking it down from its previously unmanageable size.
His ability to turn five words into two without loss of clarity is enviable. But for
his assistance, the book would have been much later to appear, and unnecessarily
long. He also provided invaluable assistance in the home stretch by compiling the
timelines of key texts and events included in each chapter.
Several historians (including some already named above) provided extra assistance in the form of bibliographic references, clarification of particular points and
readings of parts or whole of the manuscript. Apart from three anonymous referees
for Cambridge University Press, all of whom provided commentary and suggestions
for improvement, I thank for reading significant chunks of the book Donald Baker,
John Bentley, Adam Budd (an exacting stylistic critique of the last four chapters), Fernando Cervantes, Tarif Khalidi and Baki Tezcan; and (again) Q. Edward
Wang, José Rabasa, Juan Maiguashca, Romila Thapar, Dominic Sachsenmaier and
Michael Aung-Thwin. Georg Iggers, who has been an ally for nearly twenty years
in my conviction that historiography needed to be globalized, carefully read the
entire manuscript. He alerted me very late in the process that my interpretation of
© in this web service Cambridge University Press
www.cambridge.org
Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-69908-2 - A Global History of History
Daniel Woolf
Frontmatter
More information
Acknowledgments
xxvii
twentieth-century trends, and my assessment of the current state of the discipline,
had become more negative than I in fact intended.
As is customary, I preserve my greatest debts for last. My three children, Sarah,
Samuel and David, have provided great joy and pride from their early childhood
into adulthood; they have been among the rare class of pre-schoolers able to pronounce the word ‘historiography’. My parents continue into their eighties to convey a convincing interest in and understanding of what I do for a living. Above all,
my wife Julie Anne Gordon-Woolf, health administrator, part-time professional
harpist and latterly spouse of a university vice-chancellor, has accompanied me
on both my geographical and intellectual peregrinations, and has been a voice of
encouragement, patience and reason throughout the project – a gift this tribute
cannot remotely repay. It is to her that I dedicate this book.
And, as is also customary, none of the persons thanked here is responsible for
the errors of fact or judgment that may remain.
DRW
Kingston, Ontario, April 2010
© in this web service Cambridge University Press
www.cambridge.org